Promoting Leadership Principles in Product Management

Category Archives: Techology

Long-time readers of Lead on Purpose have seen this quote by Eric Hoffer: “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” It has become the chorus I have sung over and over. You must keep learning if you want to keep growing. You need to consistently feed your mind if you don’t want to become irrelevant.

Have you ever seen The Matrix, Terminator, MinorityReport or Ex Machina? All of these movies have one thing in common: they focus on the concept of transhumanism—the idea that technological innovation can help us surpass our human limitations, making us, literally, superhuman.

It may seem closer than we think in our Digital Era. We are constantly strapped to our technological devices—our phones, apps and laptops—answering emails, keeping track of schedules, updating social platforms and checking the news. Our technology has become our “transhuman” extension, but for business leaders, is this a good thing? Should our employees become robots?

Customer service continues to capture the attention and focus of companies, but many organizations still struggle to raise it to the level for which they are striving. What factors play in to good customer service? What do customers really expect?

We see changes around us all the time. Some things change so often we become blissfully unaware. One of those areas of rapid change is the people making up the workforce. With the challenges facing the economy, and Baby Boomers retiring in record numbers, leaders face challenges in the next decade. What changes do you need to make? How do you transition to a younger workforce? Why are Millennials important to your business?

About 40 years ago, shortly after the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) were born, demographers and industry leaders realized that someday this generation of 78 million Americans would retire and the nation would experience a shortage of experienced and knowledgeable talent.

I recently came across a story in Wired magazine about a radically new technology being developed for heating and cooling. Aside from the exciting product idea to heat and cool a person rather than a place, I was intrigued by this statement about how the idea germinated:

At a point when humans need to take a sober look at our energy use, we’re poised to use a devastating amount of it keeping our homes and offices at the right temperatures in years to come. A team of students at MIT, however, is busy working on a prototype device that could eliminate much of that demand, and they’re doing it by asking one compelling question: “Why not just heat and cool our bodies instead?” (emphasis added).

Asking the right question is one of five key skills that predict great work, as identified from a sample of 1.7 million instances of award-winning work. Continue reading →